The taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland paid the same number of bankers £1 million in 2014 as the year before despite sustained losses.
The lender, 80% owned by the taxpayer, gave 72 employees £1 million or more, even though it reported a £3.5 billion annual loss for last year.
The figures covered a year in which the bank paid £399 million in fines to US and UK regulators over the foreign exchange rate rigging scandal.
Chief executive Ross McEwan received a total of £1.85 million, his £1 million salary topped by £143,000 in benefits, a pension allowance of £350,000 and a £358,000 shares award to replace awards he forfeited when he left the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Chief financial officer Ewen Stevenson picked up just over £3 million. His £497,000 salary was topped by a £1.9 million “golden hello” share award replacing one he gave up when he left Credit Suisse.
Last week Mr McEwan said the overall bonus pool of £421 million – 21% down on 2013 – remained “outrageous” and he pledged he would not be taking a £1 million role-based incentive.
Sir Sandy Crombie, chairman of the bank’s performance and remuneration committee, said in the 2014 pay report published yesterday that a difficult balance had to be struck.
Pay had to be restrained in a market context but had to remain at a sufficient level to reward employees who are building the future franchise.
“The pressures on people working at RBS are considerable,” he continued. “We need to recognise good results by those employees who serve our customers well and deliver excellent individual performance.
“Having engaged employees and improving RBS as a place to work is critical if we are to achieve our long-term ambitions.”
He said the average salary increase among the core population of employees in 2015 will be 2% and for the most senior employees will be 1%.
The bonus pool represents 6% of the bank’s operating profit and over 90% of it will be directed to those below the most senior RBS employees.
The average bonus amounts remain modest with 51% receiving £2000 or less and a further 22% receiving under £5000.
The remuneration report disclosed that the number of bankers paid one million Euros (£806,000) or more fell from 131 to 110.
But the number paid 1.5 million Euros (£1.21 million) or more rose, from 43 to 51. The number of sterling millionaires created by the bank was not disclosed in the report but was understood to be 72.
Last year saw three staff paid between five million and six million Euros (£4-4.8 million) according to the report.
Some 1,200 employees earned more than £250,000 while 6,700 received between £100,000 and £250,000, and 15,500 were paid between £50,000 and £100,000.
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